If Windows didn't have to support a gigantic universe of old-yet-critical software, Microsoft would have radically reduced the API and feature surface and Windows would be as locked down as MacOS is.
If you can play around on Windows today you probably should be thanking some person who wrote a VB5 program to control a nuclear reactor in 1996 and insisted that it talk to COM1: (gulp).
Interest point, but not exact.
MS have close to monopoly state and is very close to formal margins, where regulators must issue regulative measures.
As I know, nearly all companies achieved so huge share of US market, got warning from regulators, and most immediately hit brakes to limit their share and avoid measures. Examples from past are IBM, Commodore/Atari, etc.
But what interest, using some obvious things, like just strip API to limit share, considered by regulators as offense, so subject must not do direct things to limit his product, and only could slow innovations.
What I mean, last years, I constantly gather information, on how countries grown their hackers community and programming industry, and at first I seen obvious things, but now with more info, things looking more complicated.
As example, I seen Eastern Europe and exUSSR, grown their hc and IT, mostly with cheap unlicensed local clones of PDP and IBM machines, and as I see, we in exUSSR know about Commodore/Atari and about consoles (I mean pre xBox), and we somewhere lack their taste, but we are already mature and even more or less competitive.
From other side, Japan have rich history of consoles and machines with extended graphic and sound capabilities (MSX, PC-98), and they have good achievements in enterprise machines and in hardware, but I don't see Japanese google, or Japanese facebook, or Japanese Oracle (databases). And I have not answer, how this happen.
What impress me even more - few years ago I got info, GDP in Asia/Africa and accessibility of compute devices grown very fast after Android appearance (I'm not sure if GDP connected, but smartphone became universal computing device with Android), so I see grow of games sales to Asia/Africa, why I notice - because their very specific culture, so gamedev have to made significant changes to game to enter their market. And this shocked me, as I release, Japanese just avoid to enter these markets, stay focused on their internal market and on West.
And BTW other side - East Europe and exUSSR was so poor, so having moderate access to really good Western computers, huge share of economy made accounting with pen and paper and abacus, some entities in middle 2000s. As I know, Japan have access to computers nearly as Americans, from at least middle 1980s, but looks like they lost something when most people switched from manuscript to keyboard.
First, probably, 8-bitness is unavoidable, because all those current Raspberries, are relatively powerful computers, even usually could install Android there, so you understand what I want to say :)
- Machine for hackers should be limited, on RAM, on CPU speed, sure, with limited screen resolution, and limited sound, because otherwise, on some point, will become race of wallets, as high quality picture and sound are usually expensive.
From other side, graphics should not be too primitive, looks like good compromise are C64 or Atari-65 (not many static objects on background, but with hardware accelerated sprites).
Some time before, I thought, the best balance for hackers machine is C64, until I read some details about Enterprise-128 (or 64).
What differs E128(64) - their absolute unique video-adapter, capable to show few resolutions on one screen. Imagine classic arcade game - for them very usual to have on top part of screen some static background and some indicators of achievements, and whole game process running on lower part of screen. So in good design, we should somehow make top part with minimal possible efforts, but focus on lower part; and E128/64 is most close hardware to this.
For about real implementations, I'm impressed with esp-32 rainbow, but unfortunately, it is ZX Spectrum simulator, and I think it is impossible to do on those hardware C64 or E128. When time will accept, I'll try other cheap hardware platforms, as I hear, RP2040 could run separate C64 chips (but nobody have done whole C64 on multiple RP2040s), so will be multicore machine, but it's ok.
> In fact it’s easier to fix issues or keep things like my config working on arch than it was on macOS.
I didn't have to fix issues or keep my config working. It just works.